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On a more serious note though, I actually hope to Heaven they present something insanely fascinating to the general public - enough to kick the government in the ass and get Mars human exploration seriously going.

Sadly, I suspect it'll be something only of use to some niche of geologists.

You need to ask yourself: How are we finding out about the briefing? Is it from someone who watches every minutia from NASA? then don't hold your breath. If it's from someplace more accessible to the general public, then MAYBE i'ts a big deal the general public...whether or not the general public understands it's impact immediately is a different question.

Lisa Pratt is involved, so my hopes are high the found evidence of life.

They have already shown that they can not cost-electively build, maintain, and resupply a relatively near-orbit space station nor build and evolve a fleet of taxis to and from space.

They never got the money or the free hand that they needed to try. NASA has had plans to replace the shuttle for at least 20 years. However, every budget was loaded down with caveats and conditions (eg. must use ATK solids, must use suppliers from every state, current contracts for shuttle parts must be maintained).

They're assuming that because you're whining about spending "billions" on it, when the total money spent on the entire space program (from which we actually do get productive returns that improve the general quality of life on earth) is less than one percent the amount spent on military action. If it's the money you're upset about, you should be re-directing your complaints. If it's the "people having hope for the future being better than the shit-hole of a present that we live in" that you're angry about

"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center [...]

I believe it could also be explained by other active geological processes. Maybe not as exciting as organisms, but still, considering the view right now is that Mars is a geologically dead planet, so it would be at least moderately interesting to find out that there are geological processes still ongoing. It also could provide yet another possible place for life to exist.

Methane, Large sources of easily available water, or Oil. One of those three are the most likely.

Considering the focus on geology, it's also possible they've found a surface deposit of some rare earths minerals (such as those which are currently exported only by China), though you're right, methane is probably the most likely, and while geologists studying Mars might find it interesting, it's not nearly as significant to the rest of the human race.

Oil isn't going to help anyone on Mars. The atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, with only trace amounts of oxygen, so you can't burn it there. The only reason oil is so useful here is because of our abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Of course, you could build giant oil-tanker spaceships to transport it back to earth, but I imagine the costs of that would be far, far greater than simply 1) continuing to exploit the oil we have here and 2) developing space-based solar power or some other exotic power sour

Pipeline!Uuhhm... Very flexible pipeline, with a bunch of joints like bendy straws... and when it passes close to the Sun, we'll only pump at night... look, if you really want this, you're gonna have to give me a grant...

Methane, Large sources of easily available water, or Oil. One of those three are the most likely.

Considering the focus on geology, it's also possible they've found a surface deposit of some rare earths minerals (such as those which are currently exported only by China), though you're right, methane is probably the most likely, and while geologists studying Mars might find it interesting, it's not nearly as significant to the rest of the human race.

Focus on geology? What else would you expect study of a planet to be focused on? That's what geology is.

Oil? Obviously you must be joking.

Oh, and rare earths aren't; rare earth ores are somewhat more so, but that is more a function of economics than anything else (an ore is an economically recoverable mineral resource; there are ample rare earth mineral resources around Earth, just not generally economic to recover - but that depends entirely on the price). No amount of rare earths on Mars are going to mean

Methane, Large sources of easily available water, or Oil. One of those three are the most likely.

Considering the focus on geology, it's also possible they've found a surface deposit of some rare earths minerals (such as those which are currently exported only by China), though you're right, methane is probably the most likely, and while geologists studying Mars might find it interesting, it's not nearly as significant to the rest of the human race.

Focus on geology? What else would you expect study of a planet to be focused on? That's what geology is.

Oil? Obviously you must be joking.

Oh, and rare earths aren't; rare earth ores are somewhat more so, but that is more a function of economics than anything else (an ore is an economically recoverable mineral resource; there are ample rare earth mineral resources around Earth, just not generally economic to recover - but that depends entirely on the price). No amount of rare earths on Mars are going to mean anything to anybody in economic terms until long after people are living there, if ever.

That would move people off their asses off to the nearest start, certainly to Mars as well.

Hmm, let's see...
Geologists -> Rocks
Rock -> Mountains
Mountains -> Beer
Beer -> Bad Commercials
So, it looks like Coors has officially sponsored the Mars expedition and will be using official NASA footage from the rovers for their next stupid commercial?

Geomicrobiology of sulfate-reducing microorganismsBiotic and abiotic fractionation of sulfur isotopes in modern and ancient oceans and lakesInfluence of wildfire on carbon isotopic excursions during the CretaceousFate of complex organic molecules on the surface of Mars

As far as I can tell from that list, Dr. Pratt is the only hard scientist. The others are more involved in managing the program (Meyer) or designing the instruments (Christensen, Dundas, McEwen). Interestingly, there are no post-docs or graduate students listed, and they would have been the lead investigators doing the actual work -- perhaps this is a reaction to the Felisa Wolfe-Simon snafu? I'm not familiar with the field, though, so much of this is speculation from 2 minutes' work with Google. Take it for what it's worth.

As far as I can tell from that list, Dr. Pratt is the only hard scientist. The others are more involved in managing the program (Meyer) or designing the instruments (Christensen, Dundas, McEwen).

Translation: It's only important if you're getting the test tubes dirty. The rest of it isn't 'real' science. After all, having a Master's in oceanography and specializing in research on extremophiles [wikipedia.org] (Meyer) is meaningless. Dr Christensen's 11 page CV [asu.edu] (PDF link) showing 30 odd years of work involving Martian ge

The point was to try and divine the nature of the announcement. The list of speakers includes the head of the entire observation project, people who were leading the instrument design, and the head of a lab that does nothing but science. Chances are the announcement is going to involve the theme of the hard science lab.

(My lab does both instrument design and basic science. My dissertation had two major sections, the first labelled "Technol

I don't think MRO has anything on it to detect methane. Maybe they could do it with CRISM (IR spectrometer), but there is nobody from CRISM on the panel.

Someone who is on the panel is Lisa Pratt who is "specializing on the fate of complex organic molecules on the surface of Mars.," and also Alfred McEwen, the principal investigator of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). This says to me that they found something interesting on the surface, maybe something looking like tar or oil, or may

Then it must be about Global Warming caused by Man. Those two SUV's they've been running all over the place has destabilized the planet, and runaway greenhouse methane has caused devistating thermal effects.

Laugh all you want, but that would actually be considered a *good* thing if you're looking to terraform Mars.

According to reading from the Mars reconnisance orbiter, they have detected sizable quantities of Jobtanium, a rare element currently found on Earth. NASA is proposing to congress and the Obama administration a manned mission to Mars to collect this Jobtanium

This just in, Congress has reconvened and decided to turn over the entire country's tax payments to some place in California, it might have Infinite in the address. Some are claiming that Congress is under the sway of a weird new kind of distortion field while others are claiming that Congress itself is a distortion field.

In totally unrelated news, a company in Redmond, Washington has just announced they intend to manufacture a Jobtanium mine here on earth. A large, sweaty monkey has been seen chanting "I'm

I would assume everyone on slashdot knows that GMT has been replaced by UTC.

They're nearly the same thing. There's two things that everyone should know about GMT and UTC:

* UTC is more specific than GMT. This makes it a better standard

* UTC and GMT never differ by more than a second

So, UTC is better for system administration, because the standard is more exact. If you are giving a time for a press conference, and the margin of error is more than a second anyway, GMT is perfectly fine. Many people would say GMT is preferable in such situations, because the "G" is recognizable as

Shadow Space Ship? On the plus side, finding a ship on Mars would certainly get us there in a hurry. Every spacefaring nation on earth would be building a mars ship starting this afternoon if that were the case. Nevermind the first crew that gets there being enslaved by a Shadow space ship...

Not quite. More like a bunch of NASA scientists disappearing or turning up dead, followed by a massive increase in the black ops budget and a mysterious tent built over half of New Mexico, guarded by some very serious men in suits. We'd hear about it in 10 years, maybe.

As I said elsewhere, a discovery of an alien spacecraft would have major national security implications. When that happens, DOD tends to march in, take over, plug all leaks and classify all information. Not a tinfoil hat kinda guy, but when it comes to national security, the DOD does not screw around.

Nah, just realistic. The discovery of an alien spacecraft would have major national security implications. Governments around the world would love to get their hands on it to dissect it for military advantage. If NASA ever found anything there with military application, you bet your ass DOD would take over.

> If you think the government is competent enough to pull off any kind of serious> conspiracy, you've obviously never worked with any government organization...

Yea, that is my problem with conspiracy theories. The military can't stop the New York TImes from printing classified material on a regular basis. War secrets from a war that is still hot, that almost certainly get soldiers KIAed. Neither can the State Dept. keep it's secret cables secret from the nefarious NYT. The White House and the Congr

If you think the government is competent enough to pull off any kind of serious conspiracy, you've obviously never worked with any government organization...

Yes and no. Let me explain...

The F-117 Stealth Fighter program was only hinted at here and there as early as 1985-86. Project Senior Trend was only officially admitted to in 1987-88, with very few details and a gawdawful fuzzy image. The original research project, Have Blue, never surfaced until after Desert Storm. The first time the public saw the things in any real detail was in 1990. The program itself OTOH began in the early 1970's, and the first aircraft flew in 1981.

This kind of science by press release is not something that should be encouraged.
I respect NASA a lot, but their "we found traces of ancient life in a martian asteroid from Antarctica" a few years back dented their credibility.

8/4/11 We've found evidence of something marginally important but are none-the-less very excited!!!!8/10/11 We would like to address the reports from the scientific community at large that our findings are "nonsense"...8/15/11 Ok, maybe we jumped the gun there a bit. We'll admit that perhaps we need more evidence than a single blurry image of a small squiggly looking thing to prove....9/1/11 Finding in August? What? We don't know what you're talking about. Now, about our amazing finding in the Arizona desert...

Sorry, but I think if you did a poll of the general public to find out how many know their GMT offset, it'd be pathetically low. Even among Slashdotters I wouldn't have much hope, since that other poster thought that EST was GMT-6 (it's GMT-5).

Everyone should know their GMT offset, as it would help greatly when dealing with time zones, which is something pretty common now with anyone who's a professional and has to travel, or talk to colleagues i

And for the second time in two days I feel really stupid for posting. Obviously the AC was complaining about the time given in the summary, which of course isn't customized to reflect the time zone I've set.

Crazy idea: slashdot is a worlwide-reaching site. Why don't you post date/hours in terms of GMT?

The announcement about the briefing came from JPL, which is on PDT and the briefing is being held in Washington, DC, which is on EDT. So TFA gives both those times. The summary quotes the times given in TFA. I just wish NASA would starting using decimal-based time instead.